Spring, 1998
SCCOSH in the Early Years: a founder's recollections
by Amanda Hawes
In the mid 70's job health and safety in semiconductor fabs usually meant protection from acid burns, knowing where the eye wash station was, and storing chemical bottles in locked cabinets. Compared to hazards of traditional fruit processing in our Valley of Heart's Delight--repetitive motion injuries, finger lacerations, heat stress, and slips and falls--conditions in Silicon Valley's "clean industry" looked good, especially to workers laid off after years of back-breaking seasonal work in the canneries.
At the same time, a small group of people was meeting to discuss concerns over the chemical-handling aspects of this industry and what might be done to raise these issues publicly and before workers started paying with their health for Silicon Valley's enormous success. We called our group ECOSH, Electronics Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. ECOSH members working in the industry spoke to co-workers. We put on small workshops, spoke at ESL classes, and tried community outreach to anyone who would listen and give feedback: occupational nurses, engineering students, labor, environmental and religious leaders. Our efforts were met with politeness and a fair amount of skepticism: how could the "clean industry" be hazardous to your health?
Then a UC researcher needed help locating women electronics workers exposed to TCE (trichloroethylene) He wanted to examine breast fluid from TCE-exposed workers for signs of mutationsÑ to see if TCE might be targeting human breast cells and perhaps identify some early markers of disease. Given the reports of TCE's cancer-causing potential, ECOSH agreed to help if we could. (Because the industry was (and remains) unorganized, there was no union to approach as an entity through which to recruit volunteers).
Despite the obvious potential for health protection the study offered, when ECOSH members put flyers in the women's rest rooms at several semiconductor fab plants management immediately removed them. Then a flyer was sent to the San Jose Mercury News and the search became news. Within 24 hours ECOSH's broom closet office in Mountain View was deluged with calls from hundreds of women electronics workers anxious to participate--recounting stories of their own exposure to TCE and other chemicals, and health problems in themselves, co-workers and family members. This outpouring of concern over health in the clean rooms convinced ECOSH of the need for a center that could gather and disseminate health hazard information to electronics workers and could advocate for improved working conditions in the so-called clean industry.
SCCOSH was formally organized in 1978. ECOSH continued as a SCCOSH project into the early 1980s, gaining recognition for a vigorous and largely successful campaign to ban TCE as well as energetic support and advocacy for many workers trying to win better conditions for themselves and co-workers.
During this same period, SCCOSH received a federal grant from the US Labor Department for its Project on Health and Safety in Electronics (PHASE) which ran a confidential Òhazard hot lineÓ, researched chemicals and processes used in electronics and semiconductor manufacturing, and developed hazard fact sheets and other materials to aid workers interested in protecting their health. With the advent of the Reagan Administration, industry pressure meant the end of federal funding for this unique service for high tech workers.
Another early SCCOSH project was Injured Workers United, a support group for workers already affected by chemical exposures, trying to secure fair compensation, decent medical care and retraining. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) also started out as an early project of SCCOSH.
During the 1980s SCCOSH continued to raise issues of high tech chemical safety, stressing concerns for workers of child-bearing age in the high tech industry, after the state Health Department issued a hazard alert in 1982 about ethylene based glycol ethers--the solvent portion in most formulations for positive photoresist. When the Digital Equipment Corporation found high miscarriage rates in its fab workers in 1986, the need for proactive policies seemed even more obvious but the industry remained adamant that no significant risks to workers had been firmly established and that more study was all that was called for.
When in 1992 two large, industry-sponsored studies reported high rates of miscarriages among women fab workers who handle these solvents, the news was no surprise to SCCOSH. Nor is it especially surprising that women fab workers in Scotland's "Silicon Glen" are reporting not only miscarriages but devastating cancers of the reproductive tract, together with many of the same health problems reported to SCCOSH on the hot line and through ECOSH and Injured Workers United over a decade ago.
In the face of these tragedies and disillusionment about their encounter with the "clean industry" these workers in Greenock, Scotland have founded PHASE II. SCCOSH is proud to recognize the formation PHASE II and to welcome their representatives to SCCOSH's 20th Anniversary Gala Celebration.
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